1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to manufacturing and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for visualizing products that are manufactured. Still more particularly, the present disclosure provides a method and apparatus for visualizing models of products.
2. Background
In manufacturing products, a design of the product is often generated using computer-aided design (CAD) systems. These products may include, for example, aircraft, buildings, spacecraft, engines, and other types of products.
The models for many of these products may take the form of massive models. A massive model is a three-dimensional model that may include, for example, 650 million or more polygons as compared to 10 million polygons in smaller types of models. The size of these models may have sizes that are gigabytes and even terabytes.
With these sizes, displaying and handling models is often challenging. Challenges are especially present with displaying the models and providing an operator an ability to interact with the models using interactive three-dimensional applications such as computer-aided design software. Many advances have been made in hardware. For example, processors have become faster and better able to handle more information. However, the size of the memory that can be accessed by processors and the speed of access to the memory such as main memory and hard disks have increased more slowly. As a result, this type of access is a bottleneck in providing a desired level of interaction with any selected subset of a massive model.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues. For example, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that overcome the technical problem of providing a desired performance level of interaction with any selected subset of a massive model using currently available computer systems.